Heather offers the following suite of services to support your journey as a sustainability and equity change agent.
Sustainability STRATEGY And Integration
Developing a strategy is important to provide direction on future actions and resourcing. Whether it's a broader sustainability strategy or a topic specific one, a typical strategy engagement could include an internal assessment of the current processes and resources in place, and an external landscape review. The strategy could also include stakeholder engagement, executive education sessions, goal setting, roadmap development, performance management, and support in the execution and communications of the strategy. Heather also assists with ongoing integration of sustainability into companies including embedding into enterprise risk management frameworks, ongoing work with committees, developing processes, quality management systems and guidelines.
Building Inclusive organizations AND TEAMS
Having spent 5 years building Diversity in Sustainability, Heather has developed an acute sense of how to build organizations that are welcoming to BIPOC/BAME communities. Heather can help you assess your organization through deployment of Intercultural Development Inventories as an IDI Qualified Administrator, conduct workshops to build psychological safety and provide recommendations to create inclusive organizations and teams.
Facilitating Immersive Workshops and FIELD TRIPS
The best way to change someone’s mind is through the heart. Heather facilitates engaging and immersive workshops to help you achieve your goals. She can also organize immersive “field trips” to build empathy and understanding around specific sustainability and DEIJ topics, to cultivate skills or to help change hearts and minds before embarking on significant decisions. This could include trips to affected communities or developing sessions through science fairs, field visits and museum visits to help decision makers see first-hand that a change in their behaviour has a substantial impact.
Stakeholder engagement
Stakeholder engagement is an important step in making informed and effective decisions within organizations, in particular understanding the influence and impact in a wider ecosystem of relationships. Heather can use multiple methods, including facilitating roundtables, running online surveys, or simple one-on-one phone calls.
Landscape and Trends Analysis
Heather can conduct a landscape scan and sustainability trend analysis so businesses can better understand emerging signals and their implications on your business and industry.
PROject Management
Effective project management is essential to ensure that your priority projects are completed on time, on budget, and accomplish the outcomes you had planned for. With experience managing and executing dozens of projects in companies from 5 to 1.5 million, Heather can hit the ground running with specific sustainability projects at your organization. She excels at corralling resources and providing clarity in complex situations.
Reporting and responsible investment
Reporting is important to provide transparency and accountability to stakeholders, drive performance and build ownership in the business. Heather has extensive experience with sustainability reporting, which includes impact and double materiality assessments, report assessments, data collection processes, content development, creative development and writing. Heather has a deep knowledge of the alphabet soup of reporting: Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and various sector supplements, UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), Dow Jones Sustainability Index (SAM CSA), Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), IFRS S1 and S2, CSRD ESRS, UNPRI, UNGC and CDP reporting. In the past, Heather was a judge for the CICA Reporting Awards (now the CPA Reporting Awards) in the sustainability category. She is also well-versed in the landscape for Responsible Investment in Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) factors, and can help you navigate this quickly evolving space. Several reports that Heather has written have won accolades through Corporate Register, including a first place honour for a first-time reporter. Lastly, Heather is familiar with external reporting software (Workiva), to adjust to the changing landscape that requires extensive audit trails.
Climate change
Heather can assist you with calculating your carbon footprint according to the WRI/WBCSD GHG Protocol, setting reduction targets, assessing physical and transition risk, and reporting to CDP/TCFD. She has a low cost, bespoke carbon footprinting tool available for clients. She holds a Sustainability and Climate Risk Certificate through the Global Association of Risk Professionals.
Writing, research and public speaking
Heather has a versatile writing style and has written industry whitepapers and sustainability reports, as well as opinion pieces and features in national and international publications, trade magazines, blogs and academic journals.
Heather is also known as an engaging speaker, having made dozens of presentations on sustainability topics to domestic and international audiences at various levels, from 25 to 500, and in various livestreams and podcasts.
Training
Training enables you and/your team to enhance your performance on a specific topic. Heather has developed sustainability training for a range of audiences from boards and C-Suite members to smallholder farmers. This training has been developed in a variety of formats, including one on one discussions, in-person workshops, online modules, as well as self-guided training such as handbooks and job aids. Topics have included general sustainability, sustainable farming practices, ESG investment, materiality, and compliance topics.
Other
Is there any other service not listed above that you would like to inquire about? Please email heather@heathermakconsulting.com with further details of your request.